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“”…!?””

The way he showed up was ridiculously shady. He looked like he had as Long-Heart. Meeting a clown wearing a black coat at night in a residential area did evoke nothing but dread. The two men in our group – Shuu and Kanata – at once stepped in front of the other four (including me) to protect us.

“Oh dear, please don’t mind me that much.”
“…Why are you here, Mr. Mitsuo?” Kanata asked the grinning clown without showing any fear.
“Why… who knows?”
“It’s obviously no coincidence. What’s your aim here?” Shuu added.

Wow, the two of them are acting quite cool.

“My aim, you ask?”
“Exactly, there’s a lot we want to know, but first things first.”

The two of them were still standing in front of us. Mr. Mitsuo’s shadiness was off the charts; at this point, he no longer seemed sane.

“You’re right, I came here to meet you… Is that not something I’m allowed to do?”
“So, you know what we were trying to do earlier?”

Kanata glared at the clown. The latter’s expression was unchanged, still grinning.

“I assume you came here to do something with the Jizou statue we were talking about earlier.”
“…Yes, you’re correct. But how do you know about this place and managed to come here just as we were meeting?”
“Couldn’t it have been divine guidance?”

He kept up the clown antics to the bitter end.
Just what’s going on? This is way too suspicious.

Kanata turned for just an instant, checking on is, before looking back at the clown.

“I see, divine guidance, then.”
“Why indeed, it was.”
“That might be a sudden question, but could you put up the hood of your jacket?” Kanata suddenly asked, likely having an idea.
“Huh?”

What was my brother planning?

“Does this satisfy you?”
“”””…!?””””

I was wrong, my brother hadn’t been trying something, he had come to a realization. Or rather, Mr. Mitsuo was… he was…

“So, the man who followed us recently… was you, Mr. Mitsuo, was it?”
“A most excellent deduction.”
“…What!?”

The clown’s voice had suddenly changed, explaining Sakura’s exclamation of shock. It was a voice I’d heard somewhere before.

“Don’t tell me, you’re the man in the black hood?”
“Surprised? Didn’t I tell you when we parted that we’d meet again? I’m sure I said this to you all.”

This meant… the mysterious man’s true identity was Mr. Mitsuo. That said, the atmosphere around him had changed way too much. It was like his earlier clownish manners had done a one-eighty, somehow changing to those of a strict samurai.

“What was the big idea, buggin’ us like that?”
“You’re wondering where I was going with that? I can’t answer that question.”

In the first place, I had never heard him talk like this. Even if he was in a pinch or hurry, he usually talked in a polite manner¹. He was acting like a different person. It didn’t feel as if everything since I first met him in Anazumu was an act for some calculated goal. Maybe we were asking the wrong questions.

“Sorry, Kanata, could I do this?”
“…Alright.”

My brother obediently stepped back.

Now then…

“Say, Mr. Mitsuo.”
“What is it?”
“I mean, you’re not Mr. Mitsuo in the first place, are you? I only gave you my full name and contact details after we got talking recently, so why would you act as if you know us from years ago?”

I was trying to get to the bottom of this, by bringing up the hooded man’s strange nostalgia about us. There were simply too many contradictions.

“I see, it seems like I answered Kanata’s questions a bit too honestly.”
“Yep, you have… so, who are you?” I tried to go straight to the point.

The clown (or not) only sighed exasperatedly.

“Who do you think I am?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.”
“You’ve got a point. In that case, let me show you something that might give you a hint,” he replied, before starting to rummage in his satchel.

What he finally brought out… was a vajra with lavish decorations.
No, no way. No matter how I looked at it, that was Indra. I could tell since I created a reproduction of it before.

“Am I right to assume that you gathered today to look for this?”
“You are, we did… Why do you have it!?”
“No other reason than taking it the normal way.”

He had the vajra, which meant…!
Could it be… that we’re in awfully big trouble?

1. In the original, Mitsuo usually talks in the normal polite (desu/masu) form, while the man in black doesn’t, though this sadly isn’t noticeable in my translation.

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